SMB Roll-up: Office 2010 vs. Google Docs Debate, Cloud Payment Options

By David Roe (@druadh20) May 14, 2010

With the launch of Office 2010, the business community is buzzing with the Office 2010 vs. Google Docs debate, but its still not entirely clear as to what is best for SMBs. Meanwhile, Sage launches cloud payment software for small companies.

Forrester: Office 2010 to Take Market

Now that small business users can finally get a look at the full version of Office 2010 following Wednesday’s launch and with the dust starting to settle the real question that business users are going to have to answer is whether they will go for Office 2010, or try economizing by moving to Google Docs.

Given the extent and functionality of Office 2010, for those looking for a full-bodied application Office 2010 would seem to be the only option, and research published by Forrester seems to suggest that most SMBs agree.

Released the day before the launch, the report entitled Enterprises Productivity Plans Include SharePoint 2010 And Office 2010 by Sheri McLeish shows that 81% of companies are running Office 2007 and 78% supporting SharePoint, compared to only 4% using Google Apps.

More significantly, it also show s that close to a third of the 115 US and European enterprise and SMB respondents will be upgrading to Office 2010 in the course of the next year with most looking at installing SharePoint 2010 before turning to Office 2010.

Of those that are using Office competitors, or looking at Office competitors, most said they were using it to complement Office rather than use them as an alternative.

However, if Forrester sees Office 2010 putting its competitors in their place, there is a caveat that Microsoft will need to take heed of in future releases. The Forrester report says:

Common end user barriers to adoption of alternatives include lack of required functionality, third-party integration requirements, user acceptance, lack of seamless interoperability with Office, and legacy content support needs. These gaps will be bridged in the coming years as Google, OpenOffice.org, and others mature.”

In other words, no one out there is going to be sitting on their hands and will spend the next while filling the holes that are currently putting users off.

Google Continues to Poach

And while Forrester is saying that Office alternatives don’t really have enough functionality to really knock it off its pedestal, Google was busily pushing Google Docs as an alternative right up to the Office 2010 launch on Wednesday.

So much so, in fact that on the Google Enterprise blog it was offering SMBs advice on how to use Google as an alternative to upgrading to Office 2010.The post says:

…we’d encourage you to consider an alternative: upgrading Office with Google Docs. If you choose this path, upgrade means what it’s supposed to mean: effortless, affordable, and delivering a remarkable increase in employee productivity …”

The post continues that recent upgrades to Docs have resulted in improved formatting, speed and functionality.

Anticipating the fact that many companies are still using Office products dating back to the 2003 version, it says that companies using these don’t have to uninstall them and that Docs will complement them. Google will also be adding real-time collaboration abilities in Office 200 and 2007 in the coming months.